Are Tony Awards strictly for Broadway shows?

Tonys are all Broadway all the time.

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There is no such thing as "more professional" if it is still "amateur". If the actors get paid, it's professional. If the actors don't get paid, it's amateur.

As for awards in Chicago - there are the Jeff Awards for Equity productions, and the Jeff Citations for Non-Equity productions.

They do give one regional theatre award each year. It's possible your theatre might win one of these, but individual awards are not given to the actors that appear in their productions.

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Partly the reason was that for most Off-Broadway shows, having to give out a pair of free tickets to 750+ Tonys voters was financially prohibitive. Off-Broadway shows play in much smaller theatres than Broadway shows and the profit margins are generally fairly miniscule. Giving away 1500 free seats (plus the additional costs of advertising and the thousands it costs to rehearse and perform a Tony number) was simply beyond the financial means of all, but a handful of off-Broadway producers (shows from The Public, MTC, Roundabout's Pels, LCT's Mitzi probably could have handled it -- it would have blown their budgets, but they're all in solid enough financial shape that they could have done it, if the opportunity had arisen).

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Updated On: 7/4/05 at 05:17 PM